It was not so long ago that the value of the U.S. dollar dipped below its Canadian counterpart. With an economy as weakened as our nation’s in recent history, new business and entrepreneurial ventures have never been more difficult or more vital.

Currently, one in every hundred students enrolled at RIT runs or has run their own business. If that seems like a lot, it’s because it is. This large number of student entrepreneurs is largely due to the successful nature of an average RIT student, as well as to the large value placed on them by fostering programs like the RIT Business Incubator.

The Incubator offers a physical location to support the creation and exploration of business opportunities and entrepreneurship among RIT’s students and faculty. The business park provides: assistance with evaluating business opportunities; support with developing business plans; business mentoring and guidance; access to RIT’s faculty and laboratory resources; student co-ops and interns; and low-cost space. Over 17 faculty and student-run ventures currently use the facilities.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc., once said, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Several RIT students have proven to exemplify this notion with their venture creations. Several recent developments have arisen from a diverse range of fields from social networking to hospitality. Hotel Proxy provides a clever way for hotels to save time and money when sharing rate and availability information. BookMaid.com is a money-saving alternative site for textbook exchange. Jorsek, a student creation, is now a prospering software company.

Hotel Proxy

“Hotel Proxy provides an online community for hotels to share rate and availability data in order to reduce or even eliminate the need to gather this information through a timely series of phone calls to neighboring hotels,” said co-founder Marc Baumbach, a Software Engineering and Communications graduate (2008). He and his close college friend, Chris Geiss, a Computer Engineering graduate (2008), together with Brianna Sneizek came up with the idea.

The inspiration arose from the desire to eliminate one of the most hated aspects of the Hospitality major: the call-around process. This is a time- and labor-intensive procedure for manually gathering information about local hotels. From the need to make work more efficient and less agonizing, Hotel Proxy was born. Recently emerging from its beta testing, Hotel Proxy hopes to be completely launched and available for hotel and motel services soon. Pending official release, features will be available to help users monitor market shares, execute revenue management and implement marketing and sales strategies.

The original idea and service has been innovative with very little competition. Currently, Hotel Proxy is looking to broaden its services. “We were dealing with technology that didn’t exist so our challenge was not competitors but trying to extract the requirements from our potential customers,” remarked Baumbach. “It’s all about adapting to what is necessary as we enter areas of the market with competitors already.” The business strategy must change to compete in the new areas. Hotel Proxy hopes to gain market share by undercutting larger, more established businesses while providing increased value for lower costs.

Just like any nascent company, Hotel Proxy is always looking for business opportunities, while managing the hiccups associated with growing a business. Baumbach believes it is impossible to predict where he or the business will stand in the near future but has high hopes for continued success.

“Freedom,” summarized Baumbach in regards to the best part of running his own business. “If we don’t like something about our business, we can change it,” he added. With larger corporations, employees are very limited on what procedures they can modify. This often causes tension in the work place which often bleeds frustration into home life. Baumbach confessed, “With your own business, the responsibility lies with you to limit frustration; nothing is more satisfying than changing something drastically about your business and reaping the benefits.”

Baumbach had a few words of wisdom for budding entrepreneurs, “Don’t be afraid to take risks.” Sometimes it is always a smart decision to spend time on a good idea even if it seems like a waste of time or doesn’t pan out. “Sometimes those risks are exactly why a company becomes successful.” Hotel Proxy wasn’t the first idea that the three founders had, and they have promised it won’t be their last. It has just been one of the many ideas that have produced a favorable outcome. “We have certainly invested a lot of time in other ideas that didn’t work and none of it was wasted in our eyes,” concluded Baumbach.

BookMaid

“BookMaid is a textbook exchange for RIT students. Students can buy and sell textbooks on site listings, then they negotiate the transaction at their discretion,” informed, the creator, Dan Leveille, a fourth year New Media Interactive Development major. Leveille was spurred to action when he felt robbed, as many of us do, by the RIT bookstore. The bookstore sells over-priced books just to buy them back for nearly nothing. They then resell them, making nearly as much as they would for a new book. “I got ripped off and I knew everyone else was too. So, I started BookMaid,” said Leveille. Unlike the campus bookstore, his goal isn’t to take advantage of students in order to make money; it is to spare people like him from getting ripped off.

The common hostility students feel towards spending hundreds of dollars each quarter for books is a real advantage for BookMaid. “Their prices are ridiculous — so students will use any alternative that has the books they need,” added Leveille. BookMaid is a small startup competing with a lot of big name companies such as Amazon, eBay and Craigslist. BookMaid gains an edge because it is catered specifically to RIT students’ needs. Another advantage is the ability to eliminate the time and costs of shipping. Most transactions can conveniently transpire on campus because the majority of items are in the possession of current students.

BookMaid is presently one of the most used book exchange alternatives at RIT and its future looks positive. BookMaid has a lot of room to grow. “After I graduate, I am going to get some students to help me manage the site and publicize it from campus,” expressed Leveille. Currently, Leveille doesn’t make very much profit from the site, but he sees a lot of potential. He has several features he’d like to add and would like to set up “BookMaid” sites for other colleges after he perfects his craft for RIT.

Jorsek

“Jorsek Software LLC provides the only web-based software as a service platform for managing and editing complex XML documents in an easy to use manner,” said co-founder, Casey Jordan a physics graduate (2007). XML is a universal structured document format that allows computers and humans to keep documents consistent and derive meaning from the data. Jorsek software is designed to help organizations save time and money by providing non-technical tools to manage, author, revise, publish and secure structured information in one place. These tools help businesses reduce errors in information and optimize their processes by putting the power in the hands of the information experts.

Without Jorsek software, businesses previously required several separate, expensive, complex and very technical platforms to accomplish the same task. Additionally, the Jorsek platform makes the information highly searchable, reuseable, storable, sortable and easily shared. Businesses can then seamlessly publish this information to websites, technical documentation, marketing materials, mobile devices and many more platforms.

“When my business partner, Patrick Bosek, and I started this company, all we knew was that we did not want to work nine-to-five jobs and thought we could develop better technology than what was available,” answered Jordan. A lot of hard work and some tough lessons in business practice have led to a thriving company for the two founders. “Our inspiration came from the idea that we could control our own destinations in life and that has kept us going through some of the hardest times,” said Jordan.

As an entrepreneur, you may find that you will have to change your idea, target market and general direction many times before you are successful. To stay competitive, businesses have to fundamentally understand why someone would buy their product or service for the price they are offering instead of a competitor’s. The most successful businesses are those who understand their customer and actively listen to their needs.

The future of Jorsek is overflowing with promise and self-imposed goals. Jorsek plans to become an international leader in on-demand content management and publishing within the next five years. “We are a young company with a strong drive to produce the best solutions for dealing with the problems of high growth markets,” announced Jordan.

“My personal goal is to be in a position where I can help foster the growth of new businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit in Rochester,” he continued. In closing, Jordan posed some inspirational words for the entrepreneur: “Visualizing success and believing 100 percent that you are doing the right thing can help overcome obstacles.” In the beginning, “being super-broke, not having a car or even a place to live at times can quickly make you think twice about what you are doing ... It is exciting, fun and scary at times, but I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

All of these students exemplify the entrepreneurial spirit. The most common advice for anyone wishing to be fearless in a struggling economy is, “Just do it!” Go for the glory, be original, and solve the problem on the tip of everyone’s tongue. As students, we are young and have so many resources at our fingertips. Now is the perfect time to explore new and interesting ideas. If it doesn’t work out, there is plenty of time to think of something that will.